ElmCore Journal of Educational Psychology October, 2014 | Page 40

Science-Fellows®
Information Processing and Memory: Theory and Applications
William Spencer & Marcella Shinkevich

This paper discusses theories associated with
information processing and memory. It includes
descriptions and definitions of important terms and
models that have been used to depict memory types
and processors. The frameworks associated with the
stage theory model and schools of thought on pattern
recognition and representation models are discussed
as well as those on schema, parallel distributed
processing, and connectionist models. The paper ends
with discussion on the assessment of cognitive
processing in education today and activities for
developing instruction that is built on the theories
discussed.
Educators are very interested in the study of
how humans learn. This is because how one learns,
acquires new information, and retains previous
information guides selection of long-term learning
objectives and methods of effective instruction. To
this end, cognition as a psychological area of study
goes far beyond simply the taking in and retrieving
information. It is a broad field dedicated to the study
of the mind holistically. Neisser (1967), one of the
most influential researchers in cognition, defined it as
the study of how people encode, structur